Here's the Source of 'Heartbeat' Abortion Laws Passed in Seven States

Janet Porter, 56, is an author, radio talk show host and founder of a network of organizations called Faith2Action. The group identifies itself the “birthplace of the heartbeat bill” and Porter as the author.

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The six-week abortion bans passed in Georgia and a half-dozen other states all can be traced to one woman in Ohio.

Janet Porter, 56, is an author, radio talk show host and founder of a network of organizations called Faith2Action. The group identifies itself the “birthplace of the heartbeat bill,” and Porter as the author. The stated mission is to “win the cultural war for life, liberty and the family.”

The group’s website includes a 17-page list of resource groups that oppose not only abortion but also same sex marriage, gun control and climate change science. Porter’s bio says she’s a Cleveland State University graduate with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in communications. Supporters quoted there call Porter “America’s liveliest pro-life champion” and “the adrenaline in the body of Christ.” An opponent calls her “one of the best public speakers I’ve ever seen.” Even some anti-abortion groups have found her too radical.

Porter told the Daily Report in an interview late Wednesday she became an anti-abortion activist when she was in the 10th grade at her suburban Cleveland high school. She heard two opposing speakers. The one that moved her showed a picture of what he said were “babies in a Hefty bag” from an abortion clinic. That image stayed with her. As a teen she began attending anti-abortion events. “I dragged my mother along,” she recalled. “I was the shy kid. But saving babies mattered more than my fear of public speaking.”

She eventually became legislative director of Ohio Right to Life, successfully lobbying for restrictions – including waiting periods, parental consent and a ban on late term procedures. Then she began thinking about using another powerful visual image — a heartbeat.

“God first put this idea in my heart in November 2010,” Porter says on her group’s website. She calls it “an assignment from God” in a television interview also posted there. She says she has been working on what she named the heartbeat bill ever since, sometimes with the help of thousands of others. “When a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected,” is her mantra. “It’s all about saving babies,” she says.

Porter’s home state was the first to introduce a “heartbeat bill” in 2011. It finally became law in Ohio this year. She is pictured kneeling in prayer after the vote, blonde curls spilling over folded hands, bended knees on the floor—wearing the same red and black floral print dress from photos taken beside the bill’s supporters. One of those supporters, Rep. Ron Hood, is quoted in a Cleveland Plain Dealer report expressing the same aspiration for the bill as sponsors in the other states.

“Will there be a lawsuit? Yeah, we’re counting on it,” Hood is quoted saying on Cleveland.com. “We’re excited about it. Because this will be the law that ultimately reverses Roe v. Wade.”

Porter said in a recent television interview that her bill was “crafted to be the arrow in the heart of Roe v. Wade.” She said it was “born to go to court.”

The “model bill” is available for all to read on the Faith2Action website. It proposes banning abortion at the point where a doctor can detect “cardiac activity” in an embryo—about six weeks of pregnancy, or two weeks after a missed period for women with a regular cycle. The 10-page bill starts with, “Be it enacted by the general assembly of the state of __________.”

That blank has now been filled in by 26 states where the bill has been introduced, according to Faith2Action. Seven states have passed the bill. The first two were Arkansas and North Dakota in 2013. Iowa came next in 2018. Those all have already been blocked by the courts. Four more passed the bill this year: Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio and Georgia.

The renewed energy behind the bills in 2019 can be traced to Brett Kavanaugh. Proponents believe the newest U.S. Supreme Court justice tips the scales in their favor toward a conservative majority that could move away from the 1973 landmark case that determined women have the right to choose whether to continue with a pregnancy until the point of viability—meaning until the fetus could survive with medical help if it were born premature.

Out of a two-page question-and-answer section on the Faith2Action website, this sentence stands out highlighted in yellow: “With the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh, experts agree we now have the votes to uphold the heartbeat bill on the United States Supreme Court.” The answer goes on to say that “even more pro-life judges will likely be appointed” to the Supreme Court “in the next two years.”

The states have added to and subtracted from Porter’s model legislation, but they all have called their abortion bans “heartbeat bills.”

Georgia’s legislation added an exception allowing abortion in cases of rape or incest, provided that a woman or girl files a police report.

Porter’s vision includes no such exclusion. She has been clear on that point.

“What if the mother is raped?” says Faith2Action in its “frequently asked questions” section, followed by the answer, “No other law allows for the killing of an innocent child for the crime of his or her father.”

Porter’s model bill provides for criminal prosecution of doctors or medical professionals for carrying out an abortion, but not for the woman. Georgia differs there too: The Georgia law makes abortion a crime for the doctor as well as the pregnant woman, leaving much up to prosecutorial discretion and providing women with a potential defense before a jury if they can prove rape.

Georgia differs from the other states also in its addition of personhood status for embryos, bestowing on them the rights of citizenship. Sponsors said the strategy here was to carry more weight with the courts. Some lawyers say personhood complicates Georgia’s law in many other ways. For example, the personhood measure grants citizenship to the unborn of undocumented immigrants and potentially requires an attorney for embryos whose mothers are imprisoned.

Georgia’s personhood measure also conveys tax deductions for the unborn, which is why the Georgia law can’t take effect until the start of the next tax year.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia plans to seek a permanent injunction with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to block the law from being enforced, according to ACLU Georgia Legal Director Sean Young. That filing will come “well in advance” of the law’s effective date of Jan. 1 2020, Young has said.

Cornell Law Professor Sherry F. Colb, who writes about sexual equality, has compared the new abortion laws to treating a woman and her fetus as equal cohabitants on a lifeboat. “Each is as entitled to life as the other” under the new laws, Colb said—even if one is smaller than a blueberry inside the other’s body.

“The conduct of third parties creating their joint predicament (rape) is legally irrelevant,” Colb said in describing the effect of the bans. “One lifeboat occupant may not lawfully throw the other overboard even if doing so will help preserve the life of the first by preventing the vessel from sinking.”

Porter’s model bill includes an exception for medical emergencies threatening the life of the woman. Georgia and Alabama included that exception as well.

Colb said leaving room for abortion when the life or health of the woman is at risk “exposes the ambivalence” of even the supporters of the bills about giving an embryo all the rights of a separate human being.

One person who is not ambivalent? Janet Porter.

Katheryn Tucker

Katheryn Hayes Tucker is an Atlanta-based reporter covering legal news for the Daily Report and other ALM publications.

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